Photo Essay: Surviving the Grey in Kiev ~ by Andreas Romagnoli

A scene from late 19th Century Kiev? No, today's citizens rugged up against the city's snowy winter. 

Braving freezing temperatures, Italian photographer Andreas Romagnoli captured Kiev under a veil of snow. Travelling across the city amid the gloomy splendour of it's Metro, he photographs the vast underground arcaded halls, decorated as imposing railway palaces, icy streets and the mysterious House of the Chimaeras, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento.

ONE of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, Kiev has kept many early 20th Century landmark buildings including the bizarre Gorodetsky House. Popularly known as the House of the Chimaeras, it is a remarkable Art Nouveau building covered in surreal sculptures of winged birds, frogs and wild boars. 

The building derives its name from the ornate decorations depicting exotic animals and hunting scenes. It doesn't refer to the chimaera of mythology, but to an architectural style known as chimaera decoration in which animal figures are applied as decorative elements to a building. 

Called the Antoni Gaudi of Kiev, architect Vladislav Gorodetsky designed the building and Italian sculptor Emilio Sala created all of the animals, mythical creatures and plants that appear to colonise it’s façades. Before designing the House of the Chimaeras, Gorodetsky had already established himself as a prominent Kiev architect, constructing many city buildings, from the St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Cathedral to the Karaim Kenesa and today’s National Art Museum of Ukraine. 

Emilio Sala created both the internal and external sculptural decorations, including mermaids, dolphins, sinking ships and hunting trophies. Although concrete was still in its infancy, Gorodetsky used it to construct the building and insisted Sala use it to create the sculptures.

The architect originally designed the building to house a large apartment for himself with the other floors to be leased as expensive flats. But Gorodetsky's finances ran out in 1913 and he was forced to sell the building. 

Reflecting Kiev’s troubled early 20^th Century, the building was sold several times before housing military offices for the Bolsheviks, communal housing and then a polyclinic for the Communist Party. By 2003 it was in need of a complete restoration. This was finished in 2005 and the House of the Chimeras now hosts diplomatic functions for the President of the Ukraine who has offices across the street.   

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The remarkable House of the Chimaeras designed by the Gaudi of Kiev, architect Vladislav Gorodetsky

A detail of one of the mythical winged creatures on a pillar at the front of the building. 

Italian Emilio Sala's sculptures of mermaids, water lilies, frogs and wild boars that writhe along the building's parapet.  

The imposing entrance to Kiev's Kreshchatyk Metro.

Escalators take commuters deep into the vast underground halls of the city's Metro. 

Designed as an Eastern European palace, Kiev's Zoloti Verota Metro is decorated with elaborate tiles and wrought-iron lamps.

Bare, wintry trees seem frozen in the twilight of a snowy evening in Kiev.

Snow falls on to the trees in Kiev's parks at the heart of the city. 

A dilapidated apartment building has retained it's early Bauhaus design.

One of Kiev's main city thoroughfares looking grey and cold under the February snow.

Like ancient jade coins, the Metro tokens for Kiev's trains.

A piece of modern sculpture in lustrous Venetian mosaics brightens a snowy park. 

The House of the Chimaeras fell into complete disrepair after it's long history as apartments, Bolshevik offices, a Communist Party polyclinic and communal housing. It has since been completely restored between 2003-2005 and now hosts the President of the Ukraine's official functions. 

Sculptor Emilio Sala's creatures and curling plants cling to the building's roof and facades.

A wrought iron fence is silhouetted against plants covered in a fresh downfall of snow.

New Architecture: Green Modernism by Jorge Graça Costa

Big wave surfer José Gregório commissioned architect Jorge Graça Costa to design a house perched on a treed hilltop overlooking San Lorenzo Bay in the Ericeira world surfing reserve, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Fernando Guerra.

JOSE Gregório has been Portugal’s national surf champion three times and specialises in tackling waves the height of multi-storey buildings. But for his own home he chose a simple design on one level with the main living rooms radiating from a central courtyard that exudes a meditative calm.

Lucidly modern, the new building is an homage to Corbusian ideals of proportion and crisp, unadorned lines. The house invisibly incorporates the architect’s award-winning expertise in sustainable design. “Our mutual interest in sustainability didn’t keep us from wholeheartedly embracing modern design,”  explains Jorge Graca Costa. Both the architect and surfer wanted to include green design features into the fabric of the house as an integral part of the architecture.

The architect's aim was to protect the house form the region's strong northerly winds in summer and blustery southern winds blowing in from the sea in the winter. The U-shaped design was inspired by traditional Mediterranean courtyard houses where a central outdoor space is embraced and protected by the three surrounding wings.

The architect has extended this space out on to a lawn and deck with a non-chlorinated pool heated by a mix of solar and biomass energy. Keeping to his ecological philosophy, the architect has given the house a strongly-delineated modernist presence in the landscape but kept the the size to a modest 300 square metres.

Glinting, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea are recessed deep into the building and fitted with double-glazing to let in light while minimising the heat from the sun. Other sustainable features of the design include more passive heating and cooling techniques, rainwater collection for irrigation, cork insulation and solar panel and biomass methods for water heating.

Called the U-House, inside the rooms are light and airy with expansive views across to the sea and sliding doors that open out on to the outdoor living room created by the protected courtyard. The surfer and the architect have created a minimalist aesthetic for the interiors that frames the expansive bay views and used recycled materials throughout including specially-commissioned art-work.

Champion surfer José Gregório riding a wave in San Lorenzo Bay his new home in Ericeira. 

All of the rooms in the U-shaped house have far-reaching views across the coast and sea.

At night the pool is lit from below and the surrounding decks provide a protected spot to look out across the lights sparkling along San Lorenzo Bay.

The deeply recessed decks offer shade in the summer and protect the interior from the direct heat of the sun.

One of the dramatic Modernist elevations with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. 

Portuguese surfer Jose Gregorio walks out on to one of the decks surrounding his new house. 

The house's main living areas are on to the first floor with the service areas on the ground level. 

The light and clean-lined interior has wooden floors throughout, floor-to-ceiling glass doors and bright white walls.

An open fireplace creates a dividing wall between the living room and the kitchen and dining room.

Although the architect has created a contemporary house, he based the design on the traditional U-shape of local houses with a protected central courtyard. 

Photo Essay: Milan in Light and Shadow by Christian Evren Gimotea Lozañes and Serena Muccifuora-Lozañes

Photo-journalists Christian Evren Gimotea Lozañes and photographer Serena Muccifuora Lozañes capture Milan's suffused, grey light and the play of sharply delineated shadows cast by sober palazzi lining the boulevards radiating from the city's vast central Piazza del Duomo.

The photographers criss-cross the city to shoot Milan's inner urban grandeur: the great, domed Galleria, the lacy spires of it’s colossal medieval Duomo, the bristling aggression of the vast, towered Castello Sforzesco and the delicately stencilled walls of Art nouveau palaces.

But the weighty, decorative sobriety of Milan's centro storico and the über-modernity of it's design galleries where the scent of good coffee exudes a rich warmth is a stark contrast to the grittier urban reality of long, trafficked streets tightly enclosed by graffiti-clad, post-war apartments blocks.

These ceramic-tiled, blind buildings - metal window shutters pulled down - fill the suburban streets now housing most of the city's population. Canals wind through the fashionable Naviglio area and glint dully in the flat, foggy light - a reminder that Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the city's early town-planners and that Milan once rivalled Venice for it's watery beauty.  ~ Jeanne-Marie Cilento

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